He might be new but he already looks tired of this nonsense.

I don’t think modern American political discourse is capable of the old style of revolt on a large scale. Old political movements were based on policy and rhetoric. Media has taken the place of rhetoric, and the majority of media serves to push toward one party or another rather than a real position on anything. Much of that media is based around the idea of negative partisanship (Vote for us because we aren’t Them.) rather than policy because there is so little policy space to play in when the choice is Right vs More Right. That is enough to get people to pick up a ballot, but generally not a weapon, when all of the institutional power has been focused on convincing people to do anything but. Team Red is (slightly ironically) anti-communist when it bothers to pretend to have an ideology. Team Blue is usually just anti-Team Red, which is why they can barely manage to get some semblance of support. And there is essentially no other option because of the voting system and the memories of the Cold War keep anything collectivist at bay for the time being. When you combine ‘Vote for change, don’t fight for it,’ and ‘Your options are An Unpolished Turd Promising You A Better Tomorrow (falsely) or A Polished Turd Promising You More of What You Got Yesterday (Truthfully),’ you get what you see now.

As it does in many other areas, the controversial nature of the discussion poisons the well on sources supporting either view. The days of ‘here’s a study saying…’ being a useful tactic in anything are kind of dead. Most discussions can have reliable-sounding sources to support contradictory points. It gets hard to find the truth about anything without engaging in in-depth meta-analysis, let alone in a place like a comments section under a webcomic.